Henry Louis Gates Jr. Interviews James Watson

Awhile back, we featured an editorial by a brilliant Black mind in London who was commenting on the words from the Father of DNA, James Watson, and his inflammatory remarks about the genetic intellectual inferiority Blacks, especially those in Africa, have to whites. As quoted from theRoot.com:

[H]e was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa,” since “all of our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really”; that “people who have to deal with black employees find that [the belief that everyone is equal] is not true”; and that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

If you want to read-up on that story, you can here.

credit: dfarber
Prof. James Watson

Editor-in-chief of theRoot.com, Henry Louis Gates Jr., recently interviewed the Nobel Prize winning scientist and asks him frankly his opinions about his comments, what he believes the role of genetics and science play in determining one’s potential, and his thoughts on the idea that white supremacists regurgitate his verbatim to further their cause.

Outside of trying to actually understand what the former Professor is saying, you may want to read Gates’ article before watching the video. He gives a very detailed background synopsis of how Prof. Watson rose to the level respect he has garnered over the years, and how fast it came down in recent years with his remarks.

Of most interest, is what Dr. Gates came away with in the interview. When asked by one of his friends if after the interview he felt Dr. Watson was a racist, Dr. Gates surmized:

[I left] Cold Spring Harbor convinced that Dr. Watson believes that many forms of behavior—such as “Jewish intelligence” (his phrase) and the basketball prowess of black men in the NBA (his example)—could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings, although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me. And I have to say that it was ultimately chilling to me when he remarked, with what seemed to me to be monumental naivete, that “if they find genes for all kinds of Jewish intelligence, I don’t think it’s going to affect me in the slightest,” especially when we couple that sort of remark with his passionate belief that “everyone should be judged as individuals. No one should be judged by a term like ‘black.‘”

Yet precisely because of the misuses of science and pseudoscience since the 18th century, which put into place fixed categories of four or five “races” to justify an economic order dependent upon the exploitation of blacks (and other people of color) as cheap sources of labor, starting with slavery and continuing through Jim Crow and beyond, it has never been possible for a person of African descent to function in American society simply and purely as an “individual.

theRoot.com interview

updated: the transcript of the interview